Regaining Control and Confidence After Bad Shots

Welcome to the Tennis Psychology Podcast with your host, Dr. Patrick Cohn. Dr. Cohn is a Mental Game of Tennis expert. Do you want to improve your mental toughness for tennis? Then join us on the Tennis Psychology Podcast sessions with Doc.

Welcome to session number 71. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn and in today's session I help a player who has trouble regaining control and confidence when her shots aren't working in the middle of a match. The tendency for most players is to start to over control and push the ball back when they make errors and think that they're losing control of their shots.

I sometimes lose my intensity and freedom of going for my shots. I find myself becoming tight and not finishing my stroke. How do you get back the feeling of confidence and control in the middle of a match when you just don't have it? Improve your mental game quickly by visiting sportspsychologytennis.com today and claim a free tennis psychology report titled Six Unforced Mental Game Errors Tennis Players Make Between Points.

Well, let me first say that most people that get tight in matches is because maybe they've hit a couple of bad shots or they've hit a couple of shots out or their strategy isn't working so they tighten up and they start to control and they start to push the ball back. They don't hit out on the ball like they normally would with that particular freedom. Let me first say that confidence doesn't go out the window. In other words, how long have you been playing this game? If you've been playing the game for several years like many of my students have, confidence needs to be based upon years of practice and play and the fact that it shouldn't just be thrown out the window. Now everybody has good days and bad days. That's just part of being human. But the base confidence of your practice, your experience, your past success is still there. And you have to take a long term approach to that confidence and not allow it to go up and down and be thrashed around by immediate results. Or each and every shot that you hit, or each and every point that you win or lose, the confidence goes up and down. To me, that's not true confidence. So if you're losing confidence and control in the match, the worst thing that you can do is start pushing it back, start tightening your stroke up, start controlling your shots and trying to place your shots accurately. That's ultimately now you're losing trust in your game and you're going in the opposite direction. You have to have more trust and more freedom of your strokes in that situation. My recommendation, if nothing's working, you find the shot, what I call a go to shot, something, one shot that works for you all the time. It may not be the ideal shot that you want to hit. Maybe it's a flatter shot or maybe it's a shot with more topspin. Maybe it's a slice, something that you know you can rely on and which helps you get through the match. I think in some cases, when it's not working, tennis players will begin to start to analyze what's wrong. They'll start to work on their stroke in the middle of match trying to fix what's wrong. And I don't think that's the best direction to go in. I want you to maintain the confidence or your base level of confidence, knowing you can still play the game even though all your shots aren't working, even though your control isn't there. Find the shot in which you do have control in. Maybe it's more of a high topspin, maybe it's more of a slice, something that you can depend upon that that will get you through the match rather than just trying to guide it over or push the ball back to the target. Obviously, as I talked about earlier, that's not the best option. Alright, thanks for the question and good luck with your game.

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